Stephen Van Rensselaer

Stephen Van Rensselaer (1 November 1764-26 January 1839) was the Lieutenant-Governor of New York from 1795 to 1801 under John Jay, succeeding Pierre Van Cortlandt and preceding Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, also serving as a member of the US House of Representatives from 1822 to 1829.

Biography
Van Rensselaer was born on 1 November 1764 in New York City, New York, British America, to a very wealthy family living on a large land grant in upstate New York. He was the grandson of Philip Livingston, a signer of the US Declaration of Independence, and he was raised by his mother after his father died when he was young. Van Rensselaer was educated at Princeton College and later Harvard College, as Princeton was close to the fighting in the American Revolutionary War. In 1793, he married Margarita Schuyler, the daughter of General Philip Schuyler and sister-in-law of Alexander Hamilton; when she died in 1801, he married the daughter of Governor William Paterson of New Jersey. In 1790 he owned 15 slaves, but in 1827 he freed them when slavery was outlawed in New York; he would focus on politics for the rest of his life, serving in the New York State Assembly from 1789 to 1791, the State Senate from 1791 to 1796, and as Lieutenant-Governor of New York from 1795 to 1801. In 1810, he was appointed to a commission that supervised the construction of the Erie Canal, and he became a Major-General in the state militia. When the War of 1812 broke out, he was given command of an army on Lake Niagara, and he initiated the Battle of Queenston Heights against Isaac Brock's British army; the Americans were repelled. His defeat ensured that he would never become Governor of New York, and from 1822 to 1829 he served in the US House of Representatives. Van Rensselaer died in 1839 at the age of 74.